Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Philosophies at War, V: The New Christianity

As we saw
yesterday, both capitalists and socialists confuse justice and charity and
(while they think they are polar opposites) end up in substantial
agreement.This is because what neither
the capitalists nor the socialists see — or could admit even if they did see —
is that the natural virtue of justice, and the supernatural virtue of charity
are both as true, and are true in the same way, as the other, or (for that
matter) anything else that is true.

Justice is
incomplete without charity, while charity isn’t truly charity without
justice.The natural and the
supernatural go together, but must not be confused, mixed, or distorted. As St. Augustine said, charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

"Charity is no substitute for justice withheld."

Capitalism does
recognize that both justice and charity are true, but it does so
imperfectly.They are both true for the
capitalist, just not at the same time.Capitalism thereby takes the natural goodness of this world and twists
it to evil by separating it from the supernatural goodness of the next.

This is why the
Catholic Church harshly criticizes capitalism, but nevertheless stops short of
condemning it.The problem is that the
little good in capitalism (the recognition that both justice and charity are
true . . . sort of) is hidden by its utter repulsiveness.

The great and
profound evil of socialism, however — that justice isn’t true or isn’t justice
as traditionally understood — is masked by its incredible attractiveness, the
glamor of vice disguised as virtue.Socialism
takes the natural goodness of this world, calls it evil, and tries to replace
it with the supernatural goodness of the next . . . leading directly to Fulton
Sheen’s comment about efforts to make a heaven on earth being the surest way to
create a living hell.

The socialist
shift, however, vests the transformation of good into evil with the false
beauty of perverted virtue.It
appropriates to itself the outward appearance of good, while hiding its
overwhelming wickedness under the name not merely of Christianity, but of
Catholicism.As Orestes Brownson
observed in his devastating analysis of what was in his day called “New (or
Neo) Christianity,” commonly understood as a euphemism for socialism (something
of which Brownson had personal experience, having been involved in the New
Christian movement and the American Fourierists; Brook Farm was a Fourierist commune) —

Brownson: socialism steals Catholic symbols.

The spirit that works in the children of disobedience must . . .
affect to be Christian, more Christian than Christianity itself, and not only
Christian, but Catholic.It can manifest itself now, and gain friends,
only by acknowledging the Church and all Catholic symbols, and substituting for
the divine and heavenly sense in which they have hitherto been understood a
human and earthly sense.Hence the
religious character which Socialism attempts to wear.It rejects in name no Catholic symbol; it
only rejects the Catholic sense.If it
finds fault with the actual Church, it is because she is not truly Catholic,
does not understand herself, does not comprehend the profound sense of her own
doctrines, fails to seize and expound the true Christian idea as it lay in the
mind of Jesus, and as this enlightened age is prepared to receive it.The Christian symbol needs a new and a more
Catholic interpretation, adapted to our stage in universal progress.(Orestes A. Brownson, “Socialism and the
Church,” Essays and Reviews, Chiefly on
Theology, Politics, and Socialism.New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1852, 499-500.)

The Christian
socialist thereby has an advantage no capitalist, Christian or otherwise, can
counter or even detect without first rooting out the very error that makes him
a capitalist, although he knows instinctively that something is horribly,
terribly wrong.The socialist can take
the very highest good and turn it into the most hideous evil by what Chesterton
called “a paradox; a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of . . . a
sane point of view.”(Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas, op. cit., 145.)

What the
socialist says is so very near the truth that, paradoxically, it ends up
missing the truth by an astronomical distance.As Chesterton explained,

[T]he strange history of Christendom [is] marked by one rather queer
quality; which has always been the unique note of the Faith, though it is not
noticed by its modern enemies, and rarely by its modern friends.It is the fact symbolized in the legend of
Antichrist, who was the double of Christ; in the profound proverb that the
Devil is the ape of God.It is the fact
that falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true.It is when the stab comes near the nerve of
truth, that the Christian conscience cries out in pain.(Ibid.,
91-92.)

Yet it is this
very close resemblance, this “aping” of truth, that allows socialism to ensnare
the unwitting and the unthinking, as well as those who seek to manipulate the
inevitable chaos to their own advantage.As Brownson said,

"Never was heresy more subtle, more adroit, better fitted for success."

[Socialism] is as artful as it is bold. It wears a pious aspect, it
has divine words on its lips, and almost unction in its speech. It is not easy
for the unlearned to detect its fallacy, and the great body of the people are
prepared to receive it as Christian truth. We cannot deny it without seeming to
them to be warring against the true interests of society, and also against the
Gospel of our Lord. Never was heresy more subtle, more adroit, better fitted
for success. How skillfully it flatters the people! It is said, the saints
shall judge the world. By the change of a word, the people are transformed into
saints, and invested with the saintly character and office. How adroitly, too,
it appeals to the people’s envy and hatred of their superiors, and to their
love of the world, without shocking their orthodoxy or wounding their piety!
Surely Satan has here, in Socialism, done his best, almost outdone himself, and
would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect, so that no flesh should be
saved. (Brownson, “Socialism and the Church,” op. cit., 502.)

This is why,
despite all claims to the contrary, and even despite what appear to be similar,
if not identical demands, socialism and Catholic social teaching can never be
reconciled.At the deepest level, of
course, socialism is established on a principle that necessarily implies that
God is not God: the idea that the collective created by man is greater than the
human person created by God.

Given this, all
the similarities, even presumed identities between socialism and Catholic
social teaching turn out to be mere illusion, window-dressing to deceive people
into accepting something so contrary to human nature created by God as to be
permanently irreconcilable.That is why
Pope Pius XI declared without qualification of any kind,

"No one can be a good Catholic and a true socialist."

But what if Socialism has really been so tempered and
modified as to the class struggle and private ownership that there is in it no
longer anything to be censured on these points? Has it thereby renounced its
contradictory nature to the Christian religion? This is the question that holds
many minds in suspense. And numerous are the Catholics who, although they
clearly understand that Christian principles can never be abandoned or
diminished seem to turn their eyes to the Holy See and earnestly beseech Us to
decide whether this form of Socialism has so far recovered from false doctrines
that it can be accepted without the sacrifice of any Christian principle and in
a certain sense be baptized. That We, in keeping with Our fatherly solicitude,
may answer their petitions, We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as
a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains
truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points
which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the
Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to
Christian truth. . . . If Socialism, like all errors, contains
some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is
based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and
irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are
contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true
socialist.(Quadragesimo Anno, §§ 117-120.)